movieplayer(1) movieplayer(1) NAME movieplayer, mediaplayer - player for media files SYNOPSIS mediaplayer [ooptions] [-nofork] [-N] [-v] [-z zoomfactor] [-l loopcount] [-W swingcount] [-b bandwidth] [mediafile] DESCRIPTION mediaplayer, also known as movieplayer for backwards compatibility, is a player application for SGI, QuickTime, AVI and MPEG-1 movie files, as well as Audio files supported by the SGI audiofile library (eg, AIFF, AIFC, WAVE, MPEG1-audio, Sun .snd/Next .au, etc.). mediaplayer can be used as a stand-alone application with a graphic user interface for interactive control of the playback. It can also be used as a command line utility for launching playback from within other applications, such as IRIS Showcase or your favorite World Wide Web browser, or from your own shell scripts. COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS AND FLAGS -nofork Specifies that mediaplayer should run in the foreground, when invoked from the shell. This option is consistent with the rest of the bundled media tools. The deprecated option -f is equivalent and is provided for backward compatibility. -N Provide no window borders for the visual portion of the playback. Even though the window has no border, you can still use the standard window manager commands to move and close the window. -v Specifies view-only mode. In this mode, the menu bar and transport controls are hidden, leaving only the display of the media inside the window (if needed). By using the pop-up menu on button 3 (usually the right button), the user may show these at a later time. This pop-up menu will also enable the user to save the file under a different name, or quit the application. -z zoomfactor Specifies zoom factor for the visual display of the media. The size of the display will be scaled up or down by the specified amount in both the X and Y dimensions. The zoom factor can be expressed in a floating point value from 0.1 to 4.0. (Not applicable to audio files.) -l loopcount Play the movie the specified number of times, then exit. A value of 0 means to loop forever. This option automatically places the player into view-only mode. -W swingcount Play the movie forward and reverse the specified number of times, then exit. A value of 0 means to alternately play the media forwards then backwards forever. A swing count value of 2 will play the media forward once, backward once, and then quit the program. This option automatically places the player into view-only mode. -b bandwidth Play the movie with the given audio bandwidth, which may be "f" (full), "h" (half), or "q" (quarter). Lower bandwidths require less computation and may result in better video quality. This option is currently used for MPEG-1 movies only. The default is half bandwidth. RESOURCES If you want private customizations, create or edit the file to $HOME/.desktop-`hostname`/MediaPlayer to add resources with your desired values (eg, "audioBandwidth: full", etc). SUPPORTED TYPES OF MEDIA QuickTime Movie mediaplayer is able to play QuickTime movies for which an available decompressor has been installed. Such decompressors may include one of the following: Cinepak Apple Animation (RLE encoding) Apple Video (RPZA encoding) Apple Compact Video Apple Photo (non-interlaced JPEG) Note * Standard QuickTime Motion JPEGA (MJPEGA) Intel Indeo Video (R3.2) Huffman (Lossless encoding) DV/DVCPro data ``Raw'' (uncompressed) Note *: JPEG decompression is done using hardware on O2 machines if the image size is a multiple of 8 high and 8 wide. In addition, mediaplayer can play movies in the QuickTime format that have been compressed with the Cosmo Compress board, using hardware playback support on Indy's with Cosmo Compress boards, or on O2 systems using its built in hardware support. This interlaced JPEG encoding will not be playable on other platforms supporting QuickTime; for cross-platform use, these movies should be converted to either Motion JPEG-A or Photo-JPEG, or one of the other standard compression schemes (uncompressed, CinePak, etc). mediaplayer does not require that the QuickTime file be flattened before it can be played. However, the resource fork must exist in its proper location. If the file was copied to the IRIX file system using the IRIX Interactive Desktop, the appropriate resource files should be in place. (But note that rcp or cp will not automatically copy the resource fork file!) However, it should be noted that, in many cases, playback performance as well as file size will be improved on flattened files. Therefore, before publishing movies, it is generally advisable to flatten them. moviemaker(1)'s ``Export As'' command, as well as mediaconvert and dmconvert can flatten QuickTime movies. mediaplayer now also supports playing QuickTime movies with compressed audio, for the audio compression schemes IMA4:1 (common on some sites on the Internet), and DV-Audio (normally only seen in DV/DVCPro QuickTime files). SGI Movie When the Cosmo Compress hardware is present, mediaplayer will play interlaced JPEG files created by or for use with Cosmo Compress. These movies will also play using the built in hardware support in the O2 platform. MPEG-1 video bitstream, MPEG-1 systems (audio/video) bitstream mediaplayer supports playback of MPEG-1 movies (video bitstreams, or systems bitstreams with a video track). Unlike SGI and QuickTime movies, MPEG-1 movies generally do not include index table information which facilitates track length determination and frame- accurate random access. AVI Movie mediaplayer is able to play AVI movies that use these compression schemes: JPEG, Apple Compact Video, Indeo R3.2 or none (uncompressed). DV/DVCPro DIF Movies mediaplayer is able to play DV or DVCPro DIF movies (streams). This is an industry-standard raw file format commonly used to store data copied from DVC format camcorders and VCRs. It can contain image and audio data. Audio Files mediaplayer supports all file formats supported by the SGI audio file library, including AIFF-C, AIFF, NeXT/Sun format, WAVE, BICSF, MPEG1 bitsream, SoundDesigner2, and others. Please see afInitFileFormat(3dm) for more details. KEYBOARD COMMANDS mediaplayer and moviemaker support left-arrow and right-arrow keyboard equivalents for "step forward" and "step backward" when viewing a movie file. Note that this functionality applies only to movie files, not audio files. COPY SUPPORT When the user makes a selection using the timeline, mediaplayer will activate the "Copy" entry on the "Edit" menu. mediaplayer supports copying the current selection to the X-Clipboard, so that users may paste from mediaplayer into other X-based applications, such as moviemaker, imgworks, soundeditor, inperson, etc. When a user chooses "Copy," mediaplayer will advertise a number of formats of data that it makes available to other applications to paste: Movie Data A Movie of the current selection. (SGI or QuickTime) Audio Data An audiofile of the current selection, assuming that the current selection contains audio data. Still Image Data A still image representing the first frame of the current selection, assuming that the current selection contains a data that can be represented as an image. IMPORTANT CHANGE mediaplayer supports all of the command-line options that were supported in movieplayer (which mediaplayer obsoletes) with one notable exception. The command flag -S is no longer supported. Use the standard X -geometry method instead. These should proceed the mediaplayer command-line options. EXAMPLES To show a simple movie window at a specific area on the screen, without borders or a control panel, use a command like: mediaplayer -geometry +100+100 -v -N moviefile To make a movie appear on the screen, play itself three times, and disappear, use a command like: mediaplayer -geometry +100+100 -l 3 moviefile TRADEMARKS Cinepak is a trademark of Radius, Inc. Apple is a registered trademark and QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Indeo is a registered trademark of Intel Corp. NOTES The 'Maintain Aspect Ratio' menu item only affects the graphics display of movies. It has no effect on video-output or Cosmo hardware playback. SEE ALSO soundplayer(1), capture(1), moviemaker(1), soundeditor(1), showcase(1), mediaconvert(1), dmconvert(1), makemovie(1), dminfo(1), imgworks(1), afInitFileFormat(3dm) Page 5